138 and most of them are fat. They are great merchants, trading in precious stones; seed-pearls and corals, as well as other valuable merchandise such as gold and silver coins and bullion, which is a major trade for them, and they deal in it because they can often raise and lower the price. They are rich and respectable men, they live cleanly, and have large houses in streets of their own. And they also have separate temples and idols to the locals. Their torsos are bear and below the waist they wear large cloths, that are several yards long, wrapped round them, small caps on their heads and long hair tied up under their caps. They are clean shaven and putfingermarks of ash, with sandalwood and saffron on their chests, foreheads and shoulders. Their ears are pierced, with holes big enough for an egg to fit. They fill them with a lot of gold and precious stones and wear many rings on their fingers. They wear belts of gold studded with precious stones and they always carry bags with scales and the weights for their gold and silver coins, and precious stones, on their chests; as soon as their sons reach the age of ten, they take them with them. They go along changing small coins, they are experts in writing and sums, and they do all their calculations on their fingers. They are such shylocks that one brother will not lend another a cent without charging interest; they are very disciplined in what they eat and spend. They speak a slightly different language to Tamil, rather like Castillian and Portuguese; they marry like we do, their children inherit their possessions; if the husband dies, his widow will not re-marry, no matter how young she might be; should the wife die, the widower or the wife (sic) can re-marry; if she should cast a curse on him, he may kill her with poison, without any punishment. They have their own jurisdiction; the kings do not get involved in their quarrels; they serve their own justice on each other, and the king is happy with this. When they die, they have their corpses burned, they eat everything except beef. There is another caste of gentile gentile merchants in Calicut called buzarates; they are called banquanes in Cambay, which is where they
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